d a crowded meeting, but I was not prepared for the
multitude that I found. We entered by a side-door, and then passed up a
narrow passage, which led us to the reserved seats at the side of the
platform. I had secured these some days before. In the dark passage one
could realise nothing; important gentlemen in frock-coats, officers, and
one or two soldiers, were hurrying to and fro, with an air of having a
great deal to do, and not knowing at all how to do it. Beyond the
darkness there was a steady hum, like the distant whirr of a great
machine. There was a very faint smell in the air of boots and human
flesh. A stout gentleman with a rosette in his buttonhole showed us to
our seats. Vera sat between Uncle Ivan and myself. When I looked about
me I was amazed. The huge hall was packed so tightly with human beings
that one could see nothing but wave on wave of faces, or, rather, the
same face, repeated again and again and again, the face of a baby, of a
child, of a credulous, cynical dreamer, a face the kindest, the naivest,
the cruellest, the most friendly, the most human, the most savage, the
most Eastern, and the most Western in the world.

That vast presentation of that reiterated visage seemed suddenly to
explain everything to me. I felt at once the stupidity of any appeal,
and the instant necessity for every kind of appeal. I felt the negation,
the sudden slipping into insignificant unimportance of the whole of the
Western world--and, at the same time, the dismissal of the East. "No
longer my masters" a voice seemed to cry from the very heart of that
multitude. "No longer will we halt at your command, no longer will your
words be wisdom to us, no longer shall we smile with pleasure at your
stories, and cringe with fear at your displeasure; you may hate our
defection, you may lament our disloyalty, you may bribe us and smile
upon us, you may preach to us and bewail our sins. We are no longer
yours--WE ARE OUR OWN--Salute a new world, for it is nothing less that
you see before you!..."

And yet never were there forces more unconscious of their
destiny--utterly unselfconscious as animals, babies, the flowers of the
field. Still there to be driven, perhaps to be persuaded, to be whipped,
to be cajoled, to be blinded, to be tricked and deceived, drugged and
deafened--but not for long! The end of that old world had come--the new
world was at hand--"Life begins to-morrow!"

The dignitaries came upon the platform, and, be